Keynote Speakers

Scott Adams

Scott was the first person to put an Adventure game (also known as Interactive Fiction) on a personal computer. This was in 1978 and the computer was a 16k Radio Shack TRS-80 model I. Scott went on to write over a dozen different adventure games for the personal computers of the 1980s. He is credited with starting the entire multi billion dollar a year computer game industry. Many people have written Scott and explained how his early games help led them into a career in computers today. He is married and has 5 children.

Don French

Lance Micklus

In 1953, at the age of 8, Lance got his first look at a computer while watching an episode of The Adventures of Superman. He immediately decided he had to have one. Twenty-five years later, his wish came true when he bought his first computer – a TRS-80 Model I. Not finding the software he wanted, he decided to write his own. Later, he struck up a partnership with Softside Magazine which published much of his work – including Dog Star Adventure.

Due to health reasons, Lance and his wife, Dianne, were never able to travel – leaving Lance absent from attending any of the computer conventions at that time. This will be Lance’s first appearance at any computer gathering. Lance is a gifted story teller (if you ever played Dog Star Adventure, you already know that) and he promises to share some of his most interesting life experiences.

Rick Adams

Speakers

John Linville

Nowadays it often feels like retro computers are everywhere. But even
among retro computer enthusiasts we often hear people marvel at the
level of energy on display in the world of the Tandy Color Computer
(a.k.a. CoCo). This was not always the case...

A few years ago, the CoCo world was shrinking. Attendance at
CoCoFEST! was dwindling, there was little talk of new projects on
the CoCo mailing list, and the CoCo presence in the world of social
networking was scant. But now CoCoFEST! is stretching its capacity,
the mailing list is full of active conversations, and CoCo social
networking is booming. Tandy Assembly is happening, and the CoCo
now supports both a monthly podcast and a weekly YouTube talk show,
along with a number of other project-related blog and video postings
each month. What happened?

In this talk I would like to take some credit for the changes described
above. Beyond that, I would like to outline some of what I think is
important to have in order to build and maintain a healthy community
around a beloved retro computer -- especially the ones from Tandy!

Peter Cetinski

The TRS-80 Model II and it’s descendants, the Model 16, 12, 16B and Tandy 6000, was a business class microcomputer sold by Tandy Radio Shack in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was used by small to medium sized organizations such as law firms, schools, medical practices and engineering outfits. The Model II line provided the capabilities and satisfied a market in between the smaller consumer class microcomputers and higher end minicomputers of the time.

Peter Cetinski is well known as a Model II fanatic who is interested in every single detail of this line of machines. Part of that interest stems from the lack of love the Model II has received in the retro computing community in the past. Being a New York Met fan, Pete is the ultimate underdog supporter. He has a goal of bringing this line of machines back from the realm of obscurity and giving it the recognition and proper place in the world of vintage computing that it deserves.

Steve Strowbridge

I would like to tell my Tandy tale, which is similar to many, the kid who hung out at the local radio shack and played on the computers until he could eventually afford one.

My first Tandy computers, the Silver CoCo 1, the white CoCo 1, the CoCo 3 and eventually the Tandy 1000.

How playing with computers as a kid got me interested in a career in IT.

Fast forward to 2015 when I started making CoCo YouTube videos, and how that led to learning about the CoCo community and retro community at large, how making videos turned into being able to interview the creators, making long time friends with many.

Getting into a demonstration on what hardware and software I use to record and live stream modern PC and retro systems, from analog capture devices and real hardware to emulation, etc.

Fast forward to 2017 when I am now hosting a weekly live talk show about the CoCo and other related machines and have become somewhat of a semi obscure internet wannabe, etc.

Brendan Donahe

CoCoVGA can be instructed to use the CG2 (2kB) video mode to provide a 64x32 text and semigraphics display on its VGA output. This is generally an unsupported PMODE in ECB (Extended Color BASIC). However, using info from Extended Basic Unravelled and Allen Huffman's documentation on placing a 64kB CoCo in all-RAM mode, we can hack ECB to comprehend the wider and longer text display. This not only helps when programming, since we can now see 4x as much code on the screen at once, but it also allows us to update PRINT @ and SET/RESET graphics, if desired. I will show the code segments that must be modified to support this and how to do so.

George Phillips

Arno Puder & Sascha Haeberling

We have been working on a TRS-80 emulator for Android that is
freely available in the Google PlayStore since 2012. One thing we have
noticed is that downloading and configuring old TRS-80 disk images poses
significant difficulties for many users of the emulator. This led to the
idea of an app store that hosts old programs for vintage computers and
other retro platforms in the future. The goal is to make downloading and
installing retro apps as effortless as users have become accustomed to
from today's mobile platforms. The presentation covers three topics:
First we will give some insights into what it took to port a TRS-80
emulator to Android. Next we describe the goals and architecture of our
retro app store for vintage computers. The retro app store features an
open, platform agnostic RESTful API that will be available for other
emulators. The third topic of the presentation will offer some hints on
how to use an Arduino to give TRS-80 computers access to the retro app
store.